Ben Attar was satisfied, however, with the directness shown by Master Levitas, supported by his sister’s beautiful, limpid eyes. He was worried now not for himself, his hunger and his tiredness, but for his ship, concealed in the vegetation of the riverbank, whose anxiety for her master, vanished in a strange city, floated above her like an additional sail. Little unexpected tears welled up at the sight of these Jews, whose repudiation had forced him not only to make this long, dangerous journey but also to conceal from them the existence of his companions, and to insinuate himself into their home by night, alone with a strange child. He stared straight into the other’s yellow, foxlike eyes and tried to answer him also in clear, simple, and very slow Hebrew, as though his worry too was not only about a difference in accent, dialect, and vocabulary but about a deep religious gap dividing north from south. We have come to demand divine justice against you and your repudiation, he said, and to that end we have brought with us a learned rabbi from Seville. He was careful not to add any more, so that the plural speech he had adopted, surprising even himself for a moment, might remain vague. Although he was not yet ready to reveal the two wives he had brought with him, to introduce them as daring guests in the house that had opened its doors to him, he was reluctant to impugn their honor by ignoring them.
It turned out that his vagueness was successful. Despite the plural speech, neither the clever Mistress Esther-Minna nor her wary brother could imagine two real wives, but they were excited at the news of the arrival of a learned, virtuous rabbi, who would want to worship with them until he was sent packing. They had grown up in a home of brilliant scholars, who were sometimes so carried away by a discussion of a biblical text that they forgot to lay the table for supper. Hence they were already exchanging delighted glances. And the southern Jew in his multicolored robe struck them as a possible interlocutor, for he had come to plead not for mercy but for justice, like a true Jew. So relieved did they feel that they added their voices to Abulafia’s request for the swarthy uncle to eat his fill, recover his strength, and then go to bed, and in the morning to go and fetch the rabbi, whom they wished to receive with great respect, because they could already sense the sweet taste of victory.
Ben Attar too, however, believed that he would prevail—not because of the high hopes he pinned on the rabbi, but chiefly because he could already see in his mind’s eye the living, colorful presence of his two wives in this gloomy, dark house, gradually wearing down the opposition, not by means of an unexpected proof-text or sophistic casuistry but simply through the naturalness of the triangular love relationship, which would flow in its full humanity before anyone who tried to cast a slur on it. This vision of the impending encounter so revived him that he wished to return to his ship at once. But since his hosts pressed him to sit at table, he washed his hands over a silver basin that the Christian maid brought to him, blessed bread in a quiet old chant, and began to eat the two halves of a hard-boiled egg spread with a thick, creamy sauce. Then he turned to the chunks of cock stewed in a brown sauce, surrounded by beans, and continued with a bowl of green leaves sprinkled with crumbled almonds, and rounded the meal off with pears baked in honey. He ate slowly and politely, as though to atone for the child’s frantic haste, and for that very reason he was so taken by the pleasure of eating that he felt a powerful and urgent desire to share it with the women he had left behind on board ship.
But his hosts, who had welcomed him into their home, were also responsible for his safety, and they forbade him to go outside at this late hour. Instead they offered him a bed not far from that of the child, whose drinking had caused him to snore like a drunken sailor. However, after so many days and nights during which the whole world had been swaying all around him, the North African was unable to find rest in a stationary, boxlike room. Small wonder, then, that when the first glimmer of light caught the window he was ready to set off, leaving the rabbi’s son with Mistress Abulafia, either as a scout ahead of those who might appear later in the day or as a pledge for the safe return of her husband, who gladly accompanied his uncle and former partner. Since the house stood on the southern bank of the river, there was no need to wait for the gates in the walls to be opened and cross to the north bank—or right bank, as Abulafia called it, looking at the river from the point of view of the direction of its flow—for they could simply walk along the south bank—which Abulafia termed the left bank—until they reached the bend where the ship lurked. It was now time to reveal the ship to Ben Attar’s astonished nephew, and not merely the fact of its existence but the richness of its material and human cargo.
Throughout the two years of separation, Abulafia had never given up hope that his partner and uncle might try to fight against the repudiation that his new wife and her kinsfolk had decreed. In the first months after the non-meeting that summer at Benveniste’s, he had been haunted by false visions of his uncle’s splendid robe in the alleys of the Cité in Paris, or among the stalls of the great market in Saint Denis, or occasionally along the walls of the convent of Sainte Geneviève. But knowing his uncle’s character well, Abulafia was convinced that someone who was accustomed to the comfort and luxury of two fine houses in a calm and temperate seaside town would recoil from the hardships and dangers that lay in wait for travelers on the long and ill-repaired roads of the Christian kingdoms in the twilight years of the millennium.
Only now, as he stood with his dear uncle in a field beside the fountain of Saint Michel, did he realize how feeble and limited his imagination had been, looking always toward the land and not thinking of the sea, even though it was a genuine ocean. The boldness and daring of his partner, who had persisted in sailing secretly to his very home not only with merchandise but even with his wives, with no prior guarantee or clear chance of winning over the stubborn zealots, moved him with such joy and compassion that he wanted to fall on his knees and beg for pardon for everything he had done to his benefactor. But he stopped himself at the last minute, knowing that begging for pardon would indirectly incriminate his wife and would negate everything she had tried to teach him since their marriage. So he held back and merely threw a friendly arm around his uncle’s sturdy shoulders, as though to support him gently as they walked down the slippery winding path toward the river.
And so, in the morning chill of early September, in the year 999 of the birth of the Nazarene, corresponding to the last days of Elul of the year 4759 of the Jewish era of the creation, the two hurried to join the ship, which had passed its first night on this long voyage without the presence of its master. So deeply immersed were they in excited speech, interrupting each other constantly in their desire to finish the two conversations they had missed in the past two summers in that ruined inn looking out over the Bay of Barcelona, that they did not feel the ground hurrying past under their feet, nor did they notice the sound of the bells of the great abbey of Saint Germain des Prés, whose high walls touched the water of the river. They were deep in a business discussion in which Ben Attar was attempting to discover the open and secret desires of the Parisian market, so as to know how much he could expect to make from the goods hidden in the hold of his ship. Even though the ship itself was not far off, the merchant could not refrain from enumerating in advance not only all that his estranged partner would soon see with his own eyes, but also those things that had been and were no longer, such as a little she-camel that had been separated from its mate by the lord of Rouen.